Cutup

Similar to a Cutdown, a Cutup tends to reference a single work, such as a specific movie which is a defining difference from that of a Supercut which may draw elements from several different movies or shows. That said, it is common to see the notion of a "single work" defined as a TV series, rather than one particular episode. Unlike a cutdown, a cutup rejects the goal of
preserving the original story arc and instead aims to alter the narrative and
introduce new and frequently subversive meanings not found in the original
work.

The various speeches of President George W. Bush were almost
instantaneously posted to YouTube but edited to make his statements mean
something different from what he intended: “We proudly . . . torture anyone . .
. who . . . gets in our way.” One of the most famous clips is titled Imagineand uses cutup words from the
various Bush speeches to exactly produce a beautifully executed lyric
vocalization atop the Beatles song Imagine mashed together with Walk on the
Wild Side by Lou Reed. This particular example also crosses over into a Dubtitling definition as well.

A notable example of the practice known as theme repetition isPreviously on Lost: What? consisting exclusively of all the words “what” cut together time and time again from the Lost TV series seasons 1, 2, and 3. The author Chris Zabriskie a composer and musician living and working in Orlando, Florida shares his technique: “Just find the (show) transcripts online, find the “what?”, scan to it, rip it, repeat. More tedious than time consuming."

Cutups frequently use very specific theme repetition such as the official Hulu short containing only the Doh's from The Simpsons, or quiet moments such as Dune without words from the movie of the same name, or in contrast, just the cussingfrom Pulp Fiction as well as sanctioned efforts such as the official DVD extra Buttons and Doors from Pixar's The Incredibles DVD or the darker collection of all the drug visuals found inRequiem Montagefrom the gritty 2000 movie Requiem for a Dream.

A predominant and popular YouTubian trend is to combine
this cutup derivative technique with dance remix instrumental tracks. The
sound-bite vocals are typically derived from popular or controversial
celebrities, such as Bill O’Reilly or sanctioned works such as Mister Rogers Remixed | The Garden of Your Mindand Mad Men: Set me freewhich employs cuts from the various Mad Men episodes to create the vocal track behind You keep me hanging onpopularized by Diana Ross and later, the Vanilla Fudge.

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ famous
description of the web as “not something that you just dump something on. It’s
not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes,” was almost immediately popularized as
a techno remix dance song on YouTube with more than 4.5 million views, likely the most visible moment of his entire career.

Frequently cutups act as collections of similar moments such as audio dialogue samples from popular television shows like All the FRAKS from Battlestar Galactica, or more esoteric and odd cutups such as all the non-dialog moments from the movie His Girl Friday in the clip His Girl Friday - Between The Lines Edit (2005)a shortened version of the 1940 classic in chronological order starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and produced by Valentin Spirik. While this might be considered a cutdown, in that the boy-meets-girl, boy-looses-girl, boy-gets-girl-in-the-end macro narrative of the original story arc is obvious, the actual saga in all its complexities, characters and subtlety is next to impossible to follow, so in my definition it falles into more of a cutup definition rather than a cutdown definition, but this level of scrutiny may be too abstract to ultimately worry about.